Comments (0)Holy Encounter
Parshat Vayera
November 6, 2009Rabbi Avram Israel Reisner
Special to the Jewish Times
You shall walk behind Adonai your God.” Thus, Moses literally declares in Deuteronomy chapter 13. Rabbi Chama bar Chanina reacts by asking the elemental questions (Sota 14a): “What does this mean? Is it possible for a human to ‘walk behind’ God?”
Chama interprets the literal words metaphorically. “This verse means that we should emulate God’s actions.” Rabbi Chama gives examples of God’s behavior, that God has done and people should do, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, comforting mourners, burying the dead. (Note that certain other of God’s behaviors are not on his list.)
How Rabbi Chama determined what to include in his list is intriguing. Also interesting is that he shows cases of God doing all of the above. Some are clear. God clothed Adam and Eve when they became aware of their nakedness. He buried Moses. (Incidentally, these are in the very first and last chapters of the Torah.) Comforting mourners is less clear. Chama notes God’s blessing to Isaac “after the death of his father Abraham” [Gen. 25]. But his source for God visiting the sick is the beginning of this parshah — “Adonai appeared to him [Abraham] at Elonei Mamre.”
No simple reading of the story has God involved here at all; nor is it obvious who is sick. Hospitality is often modeled on Abraham’s behavior in this chapter. But God visiting the sick?
There is a problem that commentaries need to address between the opening “Adonai appeared” and the story that follows about three “messengers” who appear as three men. As a rule that is simply taken to be an introductory reference to the angelic visit to Abraham that follows. Thus Rashbam: “God appeared: How? In that three men who were angels came to him.” In his book, “The God of Old,” James Kugel notes that God’s angels often appear to humans in the Bible disguised as men and that there is always original acceptance of them as men, followed by the sudden insight or slow dawning of the awareness of an encounter with something divine. In this case, he notes,“We are never really told that Abraham has understood who his visitors are,” though by the end of the tale it seems clear.
But that cannot be how Rabbi Chama was reading the text. His vision begins at the end of the last portion, where Abraham and his entourage were circumcised.
All the more impressive, then, that he ran to greet the passers-by and again ran to get food for his guests. But Abraham faced a dilemma here. Should he just let the passers-by pass by, given that he already has company, or should he beg God’s indulgence and see to the travelers?
It says, in 18:1, that Adonai appeared. Just Him. We’re not told why, but it’s just after the circumcision scene. He asks Adonai to wait (v.3), runs out to his guests (v.2), then addresses them about their needs (v. 4-5). There is a bit of an ordinal problem, but “Adonai,” the address in verse three, is taken as to God, not to the plural travelers (as it is usually translated). They speak in plural in verse 9, but it is God who speaks in singular in verse.
Still unconvinced? Verse 22: “The men went on to Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord.” Freed of his obligation to the travelers, Abraham is finally able to return his complete attention to God and the intercession for Sodom follows.
Through this esoteric reading of the Biblical text, not only do we gain a fuller separation of the intercession on behalf of Sodom from the announcement of the birth of Isaac, but we also get a chance to imagine God Himself performing bikkur cholim (visiting the sick). We ask the same of ourselves and Holiness is as holiness does.
Rabbi Avram Israel Reisner serves Chevrei Tzedek Congregation.